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COVID-19, Press Statements

Press Statement on NCDC’s Irresponsiveness to Questions/Concerns of Nigerians on the COVID-19 Pandemic Released on Wednesday 1st April, 2020

by Abdulazzez YZ

It is apparent that measures capable of preventing further spread and containing the pandemic COVID-19 in the country are put in place. This is obvious taking into cognizance how “stay at home order” was imposed on some cities. And it is commendable how development partners, civil society organization, institutions, etc are all contributing to the Prevent the Virus Campaign in their various ways, means and capacities.

But, the Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) after deploying 15 monitors to assess the response mechanism of the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) for two days is highly concerned by the manner in which the centre manages information request from Nigerians on the pandemic or Nigerians wanting to give information to the centre on the pandemic particularly using the Twitter handle of the centre and it’s phone lines for SMS and WhatsApp. The three mediums are not serving Nigerians since their concerns/questions are either completely not responded to or in rare cases responses are received hours or days after one sends request. Of the multiple requests our monitors sent to the centre using the three mediums, the centre only responded to one after seven hours, all other over forty-five (45) requests/questions/concerns raised by our monitors were ignored. It appeared that NCDC uses it’s Twitter handle only for giving statistics but not serious and prompt engagement with Nigerians on the pandemic, this is bad and will be a setback for the crusade against the COVID-19.

A similar disturbing experience is the manner in which the Kano State Committee on Infectious Disease handled a report from Kano State Hisbah Board, some people brought a dead body of a traveler who died on his way back from Abuja. Hisbah proactively refused to take the body and decided to contact the committee before taking any action on the corpse, but the committee has not responded despite being reminded for the period of more than five hours. After waiting for many hours and the committee could not show up for their examine the corpse, the deceased was buried.

Recommendations

  1. The Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) should be responsive to questions/concerns/tip-ups from Nigerians particularly at this time of National emergency.
  2. NCDC should avoid either ignoring or delaying questions and concerns of Nigerians on the COVID-19
  3. NCDC must understand that population of Nigerians on social media platforms is significant and engaging with them will strengthen efforts at preventing the virus.

Signed:
Kamilu Isah Ahmad
Social Media/Campaigns Officer,
Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD).

COVID-19

CITAD call on the FGN and State Governments to roll out comprehensive palliative measures to address the food needs of vulnerable groups

by Abdulazzez YZ

Since the outbreak of Corovirus in December 2019 in China, thousands of people are being dying with number of cases rising every day. As of yesterday the 29th of March, 2020 the number of cases in the world stands at 704,095 with 33,509 death recorded all over the world with Italy being with highest number of death cases followed by Spain. Even in the most developed countries in the world, the likes of the United States of America United Kingdom, French, Germany etc. hospitals and health worker are over stretched due to the number of cases that are increasing every day.

In Nigeria, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) yesterday on its twitter account at 9:39pm announced that the country has recorded another 14 new cases in the country, taking the number of confirmed cases to 111 and 1 fatality (may her soul rest in peace) and tracking 6000 persons of interest (people that came in contact with covid-19 patients). These number has raised a lot of questions among Nigeria due to the insufficient testing centres in the country.

Among the best strategies use by the affected countries to contain the spread of the disease is self-isolation and lockdown of cities which halts every economic activities in the affected areas. Countries all over the world are introducing social support programmes that will ease the hardship of the less privileged in the society and the terrible condition they will enter during this period. For example, America has already budgeted 2trillion dollars to be shared among the poor in the country on its efforts to support the poor people in the country. Yesterday President Muhammad Buhari has addressed the nation for the second term since the outbreak of covid-19 in December. Many people were expecting the president to announce such kind of gesture to the poor people who majority of them depend on daily income to feed themselves and their family but there was no such announcement.

It is based on this the Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) call on Government at all level to come up with programmes that will ease the suffering of citizens and at the same time the well to do individuals in the country to support the needy in the their own ways as the country heads to total lockdown.